Parcàferrailles
by Arixa23
Summary: A junkyard, a crazy and charming man, and a random passerby somehow manage to create a kingdom - not to say they have no trouble along the way. Les Chemins Invisibles: Le Royaume de Tôle, pre-cabaret. Rated for some violence/gore around the third chapter.
1. Chapeau 0

A/N: Even within little-fanficced fandoms, I write fanfics of those works which are little-fanficced. I must have something with being unpopular or something. Under these conditions, I present to you (drumroll): A multi-chapter Royaume de Tôle fanfiction. Do me a favor and review this one for the writing and plot even if you don't know the show? Please? I will love you forever.

Note 1: Unless otherwise stated, all dialogue is in French. I'm not sure why that's important really, but it is. Valet is fluently bilingual. L'Empereur... who knows. The city is something like Quebec, but bigger.

Note 2: No, I am under no impression that _chapeau_ means 'chapter' in French. Yes, I know the difference between _chapeau_ and _chapitre_, thank you very much. Yes, I am labeling my chapters according to hats. Yes, I am starting at 0. Yes, this is all intentional. Read the fic, watch the show, or look at any photo of the Prime Minister, and you will understand. Hopefully.

_Spectacle!_

Chapeau 0

_The junkyard; red; diving in; the Emperor_

No one ever went into the junkyard.

No one ever _looked _at the junkyard. It was just there, a stain of rust in an otherwise gleaming and polished and well-to-do city. It was an embarrassment, something which should have been cleaned up years ago but which somehow people never got around to demolishing, and the best you could do was to look the other way as you walked by the chain link fence surrounding it and pretend that it didn't exist.

But Louis Valet, full-time clerk for Trepanier & Sons' private law firm and one of those whose job it was to notice, if not act on, everything, caught the flash of red in the corner of his eye as he walked by the place which didn't exist on the way home from work.

Too colorful to be a rusted-out car, and anyway, it had moved. Probably some kid playing around in the shipping containers, unwary of the dangers the junkyard posed - falling and tetanus being the least of any mother's worries.

He looked again at the junkyard, directly this time, scanning it for a child in a red shirt, and saw nothing. Blinked, and saw the red again, clambering over a piece of sheet metal, away from him. "Stupid kids," he muttered under his breath.

It was none of his business, really. He'd always thought that it was more of a flaw than a virtue to be a public-minded citizen. Kids didn't even like him. But nevertheless, he left the safe and familiar sidewalk, skirted the fence until he found the gap hidden behind a clump of tall, seedy weeds, and stepped through into the junkyard, brushing burrs off of his jacket as he straightened up.

"Hey, kids," he called, looking around. "This isn't a safe place to play. Go home."

No response. Valet shrugged and headed toward the pile of shipping containers in the center of the junkyard, which were tossed here and there like a giant's building blocks. He wondered how on earth they had gotten there - maybe there had been a train wreck and nobody had bothered to move them to a different junkyard when they could just as well stay where they were. There were some convenient train tracks passing right overhead to help the hypothesis. Stranger things had happened. Still, it seemed like an awful lot of stuff just to leave where it had fallen, besides the fact that the containers provided convenient shelter for every hobo who happened to pass by. Though, from what he'd heard, that hadn't been as much of a problem as it should be. Maybe the druggies chased all the hoboes away.

That thought wasn't really a lot of comfort.

He was about to turn around when he spotted the red again, sitting up on top of one of the shipping crates, and realized it definitely wasn't a kid, unless they happened to be an abnormally large one.

Against his better judgement, he was intrigued. And so he made the life-changing decision of clambering up the piles of rusted-out boxes and car parts and broken furniture until he reached the crate, which he then discovered he was not nearly acrobatic enough to climb up onto. He stood on tiptoe on a three-legged chair and peered up onto the top of the container. He could just see part of the person in red, who was facing away from him, legs dangling over the other edge of the container, and gave no sign that they noticed him. Valet cleared his throat, and cautiously said "Hello?"

No response. "Hello? Err, what are you doing?" When the person in red still gave no sign, Valet switched to English. "_Hello? Um, are you deaf? _Can you hear me?"

The red person jumped about three feet in the air, and spun around, which was interesting to watch someone to do from a sitting position on the edge of a ten-foot drop.

"Oh, hello," he said, hauling himself back up onto the top of the container. "Don't ever do that again. Please."

"Sorry."

Valet climbed onto the back of the chair, which was an _extremely_ stupid idea, to get a better look at the mysterious boy in red. Though, now that he looked, he wasn't quite sure whether to classify the guy as a boy or a man. He looked to be in his early twenties, trim and blond and taller than Valet, and wearing a red tweed suit which looked more like something out of a costume shop than an outfit a sane person would actually wear in public. And he was wearing a crown, made out of a strip of corrugated metal.

"Why aren't you coming up here?" this odd man asked, leaning back on his elbows. "It's too high," Valet explained.

"Wimp." The man grabbed Valet and pulled him onto the top of the crate, then returned to leaning on his elbows. There were a pair of leaking cushions which it appeared he'd been sitting on, though now he was using them as a backrest. "So. What are you doing in my kingdom? No one ever comes in here."

"Your…. kingdom?" Valet was beginning to question this man's sanity, and the only question was why it had taken him so long to get around to doing so.

The red-suited man gestured around the junkyard. "This place. Kingdom of sheet metal. I'm the Emperor. You can address me as Your Majesty."

It was an awkward drop from here to the ground, and in any case, the Emperor had a smile which managed to offset somewhat the fact that he was obviously certifiable. Valet considered, and extended his hand. "I'm Louis Valet."

The Emperor studied the proffered hand for a few moments, before his eyes moved upward to Valet's face, which he also studied. "Can I call you Fulbert?"

"Uh…." Valet retracted his hand.

"You look like a Fulbert. I'm going to call you Fulbert."

"O… kay?"

"So, Fulbert, what brings you here? You'd better have a reason for making me almost fall off of this thing." The Emperor raised his eyebrows.

"I noticed something moving around in the junkyard," Valet explained. "I thought maybe there were children playing. It's… not… safe around here…." He trailed off into an awkward cough, not sure exactly how the last statement was going to be received.

The Emperor grinned. "True. But hey, you _looked_ in here. No one ever does that either. I don't know why, this place is amazing_._ Come on, let me show you around."

Valet let himself be led down the other side of the shipping container, which had a panel of sheet metal conveniently placed as a kind of slightly precarious ramp down to the ground. The Emperor grabbed his hand - he was wearing gloves, Valet noticed - and pulled him in a whirlwind tour around the junkyard, showing it off as if it was some kind of museum or palace.

"Furniture, it's like someone dumped their living room over here, most of it's still just fine… Look at all the toys over here, I'm collecting them but there are still so _many… _Car parts, or something, little sproingy things - sproing sproing - help me carry some of these back to my workshop, will you? Workshop's over here, inside, don't hit your hea…oh."

"Sorry."

The Emperor knelt beside him on the bottom of the shipping container to help pick up the scattered springs, since Valet wasn't doing too good a job with one hand holding his head. "You should grow your hair out," the Emperor told him.

"My boss makes me keep it short." Valet rocked back on his heels and stood up. "So this is your-" He trailed off again, and just looked around in amazement.

This was no hobo's hideout. The floor was still covered in junk tossed randomly here and there, but everything looked as if it had been selected and brought in here for a purpose, not simply abandoned or dumped. There was a folding faux-wood-topped table pushed up near the back wall, and on it were tools, scrap metal, bits and pieces of things, parts of sculptures or perhaps things more functional than sculptures in the process of being built. This was the workshop of a dedicated artist. Or maybe a mad scientist. Or maybe both.

"Impressive," Valet said. It was the only word he could think of to describe it. "How long have you…"

"Ah, I don't know. About a month. What a find, huh?"

"Do you live here?" Valet asked quietly.

"Sometimes." The Emperor looked at Valet sideways, and smiled sideways. "I'm not crazy. I just see the things that other people don't. We're going to get along well, no?"

Valet smiled with only a slight amount of effort. Somewhere around the time he'd seen this workshop, the gears in his brain had started shifting around, and he wasn't exactly sure where they were going to end up. "Y…yep."

"Come back tomorrow. Bring me some groceries - I've been out for a while, it's nice to eat every once in a while, no?"

Valet nodded, inwardly worked out the difference between trim and skinny, looked around the impressive workshop again, and decided that yes, whatever he might be getting himself into, he was definitely going to come back tomorrow.


	2. Chapeau 1

Chapeau 1

_The next day; groceries and observation; time passing; late; a green lizard; the first hat_

Valet couldn't help feeling self-conscious as he slipped through the fence with a plastic grocery bag in each hand after work the next day. He couldn't imagine what on earth anyone who saw him would think - what was a man wearing a three-piece suit doing sneaking into the junkyard nobody ever looked at at 5:45 on a Thursday afternoon with a couple of 7-11 bags?

Not that anyone noticed. Of course they didn't. Even if they had, they would have pretended not to. That was the way the junkyard _worked._

He poked his way around the piles of junk, looking again for a glimpse of red which might let him know where the Emperor was. He had no idea where to start looking.

"Fulbert!" He turned. The Emperor was waving at him from the top of the same shipping container he'd been sitting on when Valet had first met him the previous day. "You came back!" He jumped down off the container - _that's a six-foot drop, for god's sake_ - and skipped over like a little kid to Valet, who he hugged tightly. Valet hugged him awkwardly back, wondering how the heck this guy's brain worked. Was this supposed to be normal behavior?

"You are amazing," he said, releasing Valet. "Leave those here and come with me."

"What, here? On the ground in the middle of the junkyard?" Valet looked around awkwardly.

"Yep."

Valet released his wrists from the crinkled-up plastic straps and eased the bags onto the ground. The plastic left little pink indentations on his wrists, which he rubbed absentmindedly as he followed the Emperor farther into the junkyard. "Where are we going?"

"Up here." It was the same crate which he'd seen the guy on both yesterday and today. Valet wondered if it was some kind of a favorite spot or something. "Again?" he asked.

"Yep." The Emperor was being excited nonverbally this time, or so Valet guessed, because he certainly seemed to be both excited and rather monosyllabic.

The ramp was easier to climb up than the stack of chairs which Valet had had to use last time. The cushions from last time were gone, and there was nothing up on top here but flat corrugated metal.

The Emperor lay down on his stomach, chin in his hands and feet kicking idly back and forth, and Valet sat down next to him. "Look at the city," the Emperor said. "Isn't it pretty?"

Valet looked. There was a much better view from up here than he would have expected - he could see downtown all the way to the harbor, and across about half of the old city. And it was pretty, though he hardly ever looked at things for their aesthetic value. He did love this city - he'd moved here about five years ago after coming to visit for a few summers. And if you could see so much of the city from the junkyard, could you see the junkyard from most of the city as well?

"We see them," the Emperor said, as if reading his thoughts, "but they don't see us. Isn't that creepy?" He pointed at a house up the hill a little ways from where they were. "There's a window in the attic there. If you sit right here, there's an old guy who sits on a rocking chair in front of it and reads a newspaper and smokes every night. You could just watch him for hours. It's awesome. And down there-" he nodded down the hill at an apartment with a porch, or at least that was what Valet thought he was nodding at - "there's a lady who hangs her laundry on the railing to dry on Sundays and Wednesdays. She has three kids and they all annoy her." He laughed. "I love this place."

It did feel kind of weird, thinking about all those people just going about their regular, ordinary, unexceptional private lives with no idea that they were being observed from above or below. If he lived a bit closer to this part of town, he might be one of them.

"You don't feel wrong watching them?" he asked.

"No." The Emperor shrugged. "Why would I? They don't care what I think."

Valet had no real answer to that. It was probably true.

"So how can you be Emperor of a place which has no people?" he asked, after a bit of sitting and watching the colors of the sky fade. The Emperor turned his head and looked at him. "Who says I have no people?"

"Um... who do you have? Gang kids? Punks? Druggies? Crazy homeless people?"

The Emperor looked at him without responding for a few moments more than was comfortable. "No. They come by once in a while, yeah, but I don't count them as real people." He grinned. "You're the first. But there will be more, I know there will. I'll make them. Let's go inside."

"Okay," Valet said.

...Several weeks passed, and Valet dropped by the junkyard every day after work, earlier on the weekends, a new routine which felt very quickly as if he'd been doing it forever. Sometimes he just stopped by to say hello, and sometimes he stayed until late in the evening, going home when the streets were already emptying out and lit by streetlamps whose normally warm yellow glow looked more fluorescent than usual with all the other lights turned out. He automatically bought groceries, and other things, as if he was shopping for two people instead of one, and somehow managed to keep himself afloat on his not exceedingly large paycheck. Because the Emperor was worth it.

He made things. He was an expert at clockwork, cutting gears and ratchets out of pieces of scrap metal and fitting them together in patterns too complicated for Valet to visualize mentally, or even figure out physically, to make tiny automaton dogs which barked silently when you got too near and mechanical hands which grasped and lifted bags or bars or screws or anything else you put within their reach. Valet had thought that clockwork robotics was an outdated art, something which went out of fashion around the time horse-drawn carriages did, but he was beginning to adjust that belief out of necessity. The workbench was the only place where the Emperor appeared not to have severe ADHD, though the crazy things he invented - a tiny blue-and-green elephant trundled by underfoot occasionally and snorted sugar at Valet's ankles if he ever sat in one particular folding chair - seemed to point to all that energy simply going into random ideas rather than random actions. Or maybe, even, the ideas only _appeared_ to be random and were somehow all steps toward renovating the junkyard, which he had expressed interest in doing. If anyone could yoke a sugar-snorting elephant into a redecoration project, the Emperor could.

And Valet was pretty sure that there was no way the Emperor would be able to keep going if he, Louis Valet a.k.a. Fulbert, didn't keep taking care of him. It wasn't like he was unused to taking care of people. And it seemed like the Emperor had no _idea_ how to take care of himself. He forgot to either eat or sleep about every other day, and though it didn't seem that he suffered any particular ill consequences, Valet was certain that it wasn't good for him.

And then there were the junkyard's other occasional inhabitants, which he also had no idea how to deal with. Valet was a lot less sure on this issue, especially since he was beginning to suspect that the druggies and the punks were having a minor war over a hideout under the train tracks at the other end of the junkyard, and the Emperor saw no reason to try and get out of their way. How he had managed to keep himself intact until Valet came along was a bit of a puzzle. Perhaps he was just lucky. It certainly seemed like the only explanation.

The Emperor liked him, he could tell. He was treated with a mix of friendship, brotherly love, and ownership, the latter of which was starting to slowly take over the other two. The Emperor just loved having a real subject, and he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity of having someone who was willing to do things for him. But the friendship always came back, more than enough so Valet was willing to put up with whatever crap the Emperor gave him occasionally.

"Fulbert, let me look at your eyelids." The Emperor held up his latest work, a blinking human eye at about ten times actual size, for Valet's inspection. Valet yawned. This was the latest he'd ever stayed out here, though he hadn't checked his watch lately it must be something like twelve-thirty in the morning, and if he didn't get home soon he was going to fall asleep right here at the workbench. Not to mention that he had to get to work by eight the next day. He opened his eyes wider. "Blink," the Emperor told him. He blinked.

"Okay. Close your eyes."

Valet yawned again. "Your Majesty, if I close my eyes at this point I am going to fall asleep. I should really be getting home."

The Emperor looked at him severely. "Just for a minute."

"Oh, _fine_." Valet closed his eyes.

...

...

...

"Hey, you. Time to wake up."

...And opened his eyes just enough to notice that there was light other than that provided by a couple hijacked spotlights set up in the corner of the workshop. "Mmf," he said, about as articulately as he could manage at this stage of the morning. "Noyet..."

Then his brain engaged. And he panicked.

"Oh my god, is it morning already? Shit shit shit shit, I've got to get to work..." He scrambled up out of the chair he'd fallen asleep on, trying to comb his short hair back into place with his fingers while checking the watch on his other hand. It was 8:52. "My god, my boss is going to _kill_ me. Byeeee, Your Majesty!"

"Already?" the Emperor said, to what turned out to be an empty junkyard, because Valet was already sprinting down the street, trying to rebutton his suit on the run. He sighed, rolled his eyes, and went back to his _other_ project, the one he worked on while Fulbert wasn't around.

At least falling asleep in all your clothes meant that you didn't have to get dressed again in the morning. Valet rushed in through the front door of Trepanier & Sons at 8:55 exactly, and tried to catch his breath as one of the Sons told him severely (and rather unnecessarily in Valet's opinion), "Valet, you are almost an _hour_ late for work. I hope you have a satisfactory explanation for this."

"I forgot to set my alarm clock," Valet said meekly. "I'm sorry. I can stay late today. It won't happen again."

"Good," the Son said, and snapped his fingers toward the inner office. "You're needed in there. It's been total chaos. Nobody can find anything."

Valet slid into the inner office and thanked everything he could think of that he had never been late before. His excuse had been the lamest ever, but he was still a very useful clerk. He was going to get away with it, this time.

He spent the rest of the day sitting at his desk, or at someone else's desk, or on someone else's desk, or on the floor, or at one point under someone else's desk, sifting through piles of paperwork which seemed determined to hide from him everything that he was searching for. This was not a day in which he could protest working overtime, and so it was almost seven o'clock before he got back to the junkyard, despite his only offering to stay an hour late. He was absolutely exhausted and nursing a rather bad headache. The only reason he stopped by at all was that he knew the Emperor would be offended if he didn't.

He got another unexpected hug when the Emperor looked up from one of his microscope-like gadgets at the worktable and noticed him. "Your boss didn't kill you!"

"Uh, no. I didn't mean it literally." He stepped out of the Emperor's hug and laughed. "He is harsh, but not that harsh."

"I made you something." The Emperor picked up something green and fuzzy from the workbench and handed it to Valet. It was a large plush lizard, vaguely chameleon-like, with a six-inch-long tongue. And it was wearing a black and red hat.

"Um... thank you?" Valet said, taking the lizard and examining it. It was the weirdest gift anyone had ever given him.

"You also get a hat." The Emperor placed it on Valet's head ceremonially. Valet took it off and examined it as well. It was grey and vaguely fedora-ish, and actually a very nice hat.

"If you're not going to grow your hair, you can at least wear a hat," the Emperor told him. "It's a junkyard hat."

Valet felt oddly flattered. Even if they were strange gifts, they were still random gifts, and he didn't get those very often. Besides... _It's a junkyard hat._ He wasn't going to contemplate that too closely, but it was probably a bonus.

"Thank you," he said. "I will most definitely wear it."

"You can wear the lizard too if you like," the Emperor said.

A/N: The things which the Emperor observes from his shipping container perch are all things which I actually observed on my last trip to Quebec City. My family spent about an hour by the wall looking out over the city waiting for the Moulin à Images to start (it never did, but ah well), and it is _incredible_ what you can see from up there. The laundry lady was slightly embellished for the fic, but the old man smoking is exactly what we really saw. It was like something out of a painting. Just... wow.


	3. Chapeau 2

Chapeau 2

_Disaster; proof of nonexistence; unprofessional care; the second hat; one is not enough; end of a life, beginning of another_

Things had been going well at the junkyard. The Emperor was in the middle of some project which he refused to talk to Valet about, probably, Valet assumed, because he wanted it to be a surprise. The weather had been nice lately, which was a relief - sitting inside a metal shipping container while the rain played it like a steel drum was not exactly a treat for the ears. Valet was finding himself slowly slipping into a different kind of mentality; the Emperor was infecting him with his worldview. This was going to work, he thought. They were going to be able to build something real here. It was only a matter of time before the Emperor's sculptures, which he'd placed around the junkyard within notice of anyone who cared to look, started attracting other people.

And then they did. And Valet, when he looked back on this episode in both their lives, always wished desperately, more than anything, that they hadn't.

His day that day started out normal - wake up groggily, drag self to work without eating breakfast because self couldn't really afford to have breakfast and there was free coffee at work anyway, shuffle paper for eight hours, clean up after other people who never cleaned up after themselves, have another cup of coffee to stave off fatigue, head back to junkyard, because where else had he ever gone in his free time before he had met the Emperor? He couldn't remember anymore. Quite possibly nowhere.

He could feel as soon as he stepped through the hole in the fence that there was something wrong. The air didn't feel right, but he couldn't put his finger on it until he noticed that the sculpture usually acting as a kind of a gate to the junkyard, an arch made out of strips of sheet metal and thin iron bars, was knocked over. A strong wind? He hadn't noticed anything of the kind.

He looked around, trying to spot other clues to the mystery. The shipping crates were all in place - that was no surprise, it would be extremely difficult to move them with less than twenty people or a crane. But the clockwork creations were all wrecked, knocked down, kicked apart, lying scattered on the ground with their insides spilling out. A mechanical leg twitched weakly in the center of a pile of gears.

Valet's throat slowly sank into the pit of his stomach. "Shit," he whispered. _Oh, my god._

"Emperor?" he called, his voice sounding very thin in the silence of the junkyard - it had never felt more like a vacant lot than it did now. "Your Majesty?"

There was no response. _Okay, don't worry, maybe he's in the workshop and can't hear you. Maybe he ran away when they trashed the junkyard. He's not tethered to this spot._

So he checked the top of the shipping crate where they sat to watch the city, checked the wedge of space between the fence and a crate where the Emperor sat and drew funny stick figures for him, checked the burnt-out jeep which was - had previously been - neutral ground between them and the punks, checked the spot in the sun where they had a couple of cinderblocks set up as makeshift seats, and, unable to put it off any longer, checked the workshop.

He knew before he saw it that the place was going to be trashed. Tables overturned, gears and parts kicked this way and that, the electric lines ripped off the wall and their generator stolen. He prayed that the Emperor wasn't in here.

But, again, he knew. He could _smell_ the blood in the air, slightly rustier than the rest of the junkyard.

The Emperor was behind the overturned workbench, unconscious or close to it. Valet knelt down beside him, trying to stop his mind from racing. "I'm calling 911," he told him, fumbling in his pocket for his cell phone.

The Emperor shivered, and tried unsuccessfully to sit up. His face was a mess. "I'm okay," he muttered. "It's not that bad."

"The hell it isn't! You're bleeding all over! What did they _do_ to you? _Who _were - never mind. We have to get you to a hospital."

The Emperor shook his head. "No... no hospital..."

"Oh, yes, hospital!" Valet's hands were shaking so badly he kept almost dropping the phone. He'd known this was going to happen, really. Stupid, stupid, idiot. But at the same time, it came as a larger shock than he was sure he could deal with.

The Emperor grabbed Valet's cell-phone-holding wrist, preventing him from dialing. "Fulbert... you can't... it won' work... they won't... 's not as bad's it looks. Give me a... chance..." He trailed off, his grip relaxing, apparently passing out again.

Valet took a deep breath. Okay, maybe he was overreacting a bit. He somehow doubted it, but still. "Fine. We'll assess the damage first, okay? And then I'm going to decide."

Their salvaged water dispenser bottle was still intact, thank god, and Valet cleaned up the Emperor as best he could using damp rags. It was probably not the most hygienic way to do things, he thought. He wished he had some hydrogen peroxide, at least.

But the Emperor had been right. It mostly wasn't as bad as it had looked at first. It was hard to tell if weapons had been involved, but his body was mostly just scratched up. His hands were worse, cut up pretty badly. He'd tried to defend himself, at least - he wasn't _that_ insane.

But his face was _worse_ than it had been at first glance. It looked like he'd been knifed - the entire left side of his face was a raw, bloody mess. His left eye was swollen shut already and oozing some kind of yellowish goo, and the right one wasn't all that much better.

Valet swallowed, trying to down the nausea he felt. "There's no way I can take care of you by myself like this. I'm calling 911. Now." He was putting his foot down this time. He might be the Emperor's chore-doer in his mind, but in Valet's mind he was his caretaker, the one who did the necessary things. And if anything had ever been necessary, this was.

The Emperor shivered again, and coughed. He was propped up against the wall by this time, head leaning back, eyes closed - like he had a choice. "...won't come..." he muttered. "We don' exist to them..."

Brain-damaged as well, or possibly just even less sane than regular. Great. Valet managed to punch the three numbers in the correct order on the second try, and a calm female voice answered. "911, what is the location of your emergency?"

"The, um, the junkyard downtown? You know, the one under the train tracks?" Damn it, he didn't even know the address. Did this place even _have_ an address?

The voice on the end of the line sounded curiously dull. "There's no way into that junkyard. Please stop wasting police time." There was a click, and the line went dead.

Valet stared at the cell phone in his hand for an indeterminate length of time, his mind blank.

Antibiotics, he thought eventually from out of a daze. I have to find something or he's going to lose his eyes. At the least. What can you get without a prescription?Can you get _anything_ without a prescription? Should I bribe my doctor? I have no idea what to do; I have no medical training whatsoever, I'm a _clerk_. He's going to die on me, and I don't have the money to persecute for murder. I don't have the money to persecute for _anything._ We have public health care, they have no right to tell him that he doesn't exist! I don't have the money to persecute for that, either. "I'm going to go the drug store." They have to have something I can use. Something. Bandages, anti-inflammatories, anti-infectives...

"Fulbert," the Emperor whispered.

"Yes?"

But he got no response. Valet bit his lip, and tried to remember how to check someone's pulse. That was before he heard the Emperor's breathing, loud and steady. It was hard to tell whether he was unconscious or just asleep, but in any case, this seemed like a good time to hurry to the drug store.

Walking to the store - _why don't I have a car? Even if you can walk everywhere in the city, didn't I ever think there might be an emergency? Why don't I at least have a _bicycle? - gave him a chance to clear his head a bit. It had been the druggies, he was fairly sure of it. The punks were not usually this violent - they thought the Emperor was kind of cool, in an unhinged sort of way, which was pretty much dead-on right. But a group of high, crazy bums, fighting for possession of the junkyard, running into the weird man in the corrugated crown who refused to get out of their way... That was most definitely what had happened. It was painful to picture it. And he knew that he was never going to forgive himself for not having been there, not having been there to maybe have been able to prevent it.

He just prayed that they would leave the two of them alone until the Emperor recovered enough to leave. Valet could maybe take him to his apartment, or something, and they could figure things out from there. The Emperor was clearly right, at least this time, and the health department, or the police, or whoever, everyone, was insane. Valet was going to have to take days off from work, without coming in to explain. The apartment was just going to have to sit there, and somehow they were going to pull through.

The drug store had a meager selection of what he was looking for, but it would have to be enough. It felt like he was back in the stone age, no idea what to do and nothing to do it with. But he'd just have to figure it out. So he went back, as quickly as possible, to the junkyard which didn't exist and the unconscious young man in it.

When he was finished fixing up the Emperor as much as possible with bandages and antibiotics and the extremely makeshift bed, he called his job. No one answered the phone - they were closed already, which he knew, as he'd been the last one to leave - so he left a short message about having to care for his brother, who was severely sick, and being unable to come in for an undetermined amount of time. It was as close to the truth as he was willing to get.

The Emperor was still asleep, so Valet took the opportunity to begin reordering the workshop again. It was still unclear in his mind whether they were ever going to come back here after the Emperor recovered - which he would, Valet refused to be anything other than optimistic about this - but he just couldn't live with that amount of mess all around him. Besides, the Emperor would want to take his projects with him.

And that was how he found the second hat, a black fedora with a blue band, tossed in a corner. He picked it up and found the note pinned to it - _Fulbert,_ in the Emperor's flamboyant, old-fashioned cursive.

Another hat? he thought, as his throat seized up and he told it not to. Was the first one not enough? Why does he keep giving me hats?

But he placed it carefully on a chair anyway, and went to try and wrestle the workbench upright again.

There was no sleep whatsoever for him in the next couple of days. He knew absolutely nothing about the Emperor, was the lesson that was driven home to him again and again in that period of time. Didn't know his real name, didn't know if he even _had_ a real name, didn't know where he came from, didn't know what he came from, didn't know if he had family or relatives, didn't really know how old he was, didn't know anything about him. If, theoretically, he did die, Valet had no idea what would happen to him.

Oh, the antibiotics he'd managed to find were mostly working fine, as far as he could tell. But the exception, and it was not a negligible exception, was the Emperor's left eye. It had gotten infected, unsurprisingly enough, and the infection was spreading across the whole left side of his face. He had a fever, hadn't really woken up since the first day, and all that Valet could do was pray that he would pull through. He had tried 911 again, and the hospital, and several doctors' offices, and gotten the exact same message from everyone who answered the phone: _Stop pranking us. There's no one real in that junkyard._

The Emperor was going to lose that eye, he could tell that already. His right one was healing fine - it hadn't been damaged all that much really - but the left got worse and worse every day. There was nothing he could do about it - the critical damage was already done. The people at the hospital could maybe have saved it, but no, because they were apparently blind to what was right in front of them, this talented and amazing man was going to be _literally_ half blind for the rest of his life. Valet hated them. But whatever else happened, the infection and the fever _had_ to stop.

The manager in the drug store finally noticed him on one of his trips, and asked him what was going on. Valet explained with as close an approximation of the scenario as he could come to, and was handed a double-strength tube of something with an unpronounceable name and a wink. And the infection stopped spreading. But the fever stayed the same.

And Valet was exhausted. He didn't know how many hours he'd gone straight without sleep anymore - forty-eight? Seventy-two? He'd dozed off for a few minutes at a time at night, yes, but the catnaps were failing to make a difference anymore. He didn't even know that he'd fallen asleep in a chair in the workshop until a noise half-woke him up.

"Fulbert?"

Oh god. The Emperor was awake. Or somewhat so, anyway. Valet scrambled to his side.

The Emperor looked up at him groggily with his one good eye. "Your hair," he mumbled, "is longer..."

His expression changed to one of slight puzzlement. "My eye... won't... it won't..."

"Shush," Valet told him. "Go back to sleep."

The Emperor closed his eye again, and Valet felt his forehead, then straightened up leaned against the wall, light-headed and ecstatic. His temperature was lower. He was on the mend.

And he'd only noticed Valet's hair _now,_ the idiot. It wasn't like he hadn't been growing it out ever since the Emperor had told him he should.

He was going to sleep, he decided. He was going to make himself sick if he stayed up much longer.

His cell phone woke him up just as he was beginning to drift into deeper sleep. "Louis Valet," he mumbled into it without bothering to check the caller ID first.

"Valet, where the hell _are_ you? We have been trying to reach you for three whole days. We called your home phone and you weren't there. We emailed you and you didn't respond. Stéphanie finally found your cell phone number just now, and - are you drunk?"

It was his boss. Oh, god.

"No, I'm not drunk. You woke me up."

"At 5:30 in the afternoon? Really? Valet, this behavior is inexcusable. You have always been the most hard-working, valuable clerk of our firm. I don't understand what has happened to you. First you come in more than an hour late with a paper-thin excuse, which we only let slide because we assumed it was a one-time lapse. But now you apparently think you can take a vacation any time you feel like it without giving us notice or a reason." There was an awkward silence. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I'm taking care of my brother, I told you," Valet said, an edge of irritation creeping into his voice. "He's very sick, and I'm the only person who's around to take care of him."

"Is this _brother_ of yours marooned in Antarctica?" The sarcasm in the Son's voice was biting. "Valet, if he's in the hospital, he doesn't need you around the clock, and if he isn't, then why isn't he? I expect you to be in the office tomorrow at eight with no excuses."

"No," Valet said.

"Excuse me?"

"No. My brother needs me. I can't come."

There was a dangerous edge in the Son's voice now. "Clerks are not hard to come by, Valet. Do not make the mistake of thinking you are irreplaceable in our firm."

"I'm not, and I'm not going to be there tomorrow. I'm sorry, sir."

The Son took a deep breath, making the phone line crackle. "In that case, I have no choice. You're fired, Valet. You can-"

"Thank you, sir," Valet said, and hung up.

He could feel his old life slipping away before his eyes. He could sell his apartment and some belongings, that should bring in enough money for basic necessities for a while at least. He had no investment in that world anymore.

From this time on, he decided, I am Louis Valet no more. I'm going to be Fulbert full-time.

And then he fell asleep again.

...

A/N: These chapters are not going to get any shorter. The next couple, anyway.

I had writer's block on this for so long, and eventually inspiration hit and I finished this entire chapter just now instead of getting any sleep. I'm going to make like Valet - sorry, Fulbert - and crash now.

Because I'm so tired, there may have been a few things I missed. Please tell me if you noticed any.


	4. Chapeau 3

Chapeau 3

_On the mend; a dish best served hot; monocular vision; the third hat; another job to do; a skeleton in a kilt_

Valet - or, rather, Fulbert - was woken after an indeterminate period of time by more noises from the Emperor. He unstuck his face from the floor and sat up, rubbing his eyes as the Emperor did the same thing in his makeshift bed a few feet away. "Wooow. I feel _awful._ Mirror, please."

Fulbert stared at him, half-asleep. "Whaaa?"

The Emperor held out his hand. "Mirror. Please. Get me a mirror."

Fulbert did so, and the Emperor stared at himself. "My god. I'm a mess. How many days ago was..."

"Four. Or five. I was sleeping for some of it - I'll have to check my phone."

The Emperor stared at himself some more. He _was_ a mess, to be honest - most of his face and hands were either bruised, cut, or both. And then there was his eye, which he rubbed at experimentally. "I'm going to lose this, aren't I," he said, pointing at it. It was a statement, not a question.

"I'm sorry," Fulbert said hopelessly.

"Yes or no, Fulbert."

"Yes."

The Emperor grinned, then winced. "Cool. Get me some water, would you? I have an awful headache."

"We're almost out of - wait, _what?_"

"Almost out is not out. Don't you think eyepatches are cute? I do."

Right, Fulbert remembered. He was talking to a crazy delusional man. The fact that he himself had decided to buy into said crazy delusional man's worldview full-time didn't mean that the Emperor was any saner, it just meant that he, Fulbert, was insaner.

He got the glass of water in silence, waited while the Emperor drank and subsequently fell asleep again, snuck back to his apartment to refill the 19-liter bottle and managed to successfully avoid his landlady, returned to the junkyard, napped again - god, he really was tired - woke up and stared at the workbench and wondered what the hell he was doing. And then decided: No. No more wondering. I made my choice, I'm starting a new life here. I have no idea what I'm doing, as usual... but that's okay.

And it _was_ okay. He conducted his affairs over the next couple days with a kind of odd calm, as if he was directing himself from the outside, working through a world which was suddenly a playground he could do anything in. He _did_ know how to do all of this. He went and talked to his landlady, who had been distraught for the past few days, thinking something had happened to him. Something had, he supposed. She was perfectly happy, if a bit puzzled, to let him keep the apartment for long enough for him to sell all his furniture and non-essential belongings, which, he realized now, were more than he'd thought he had. He took all the money he had in the bank out of it, and said goodbye to his landlady. He was oddly unworried about what they would do when the money ran out. Mundane things seemed to matter less and less the more time he spent around the Emperor.

Who, to turn the topic in a different direction, was getting steadily better - by the end of the week he was back at the workbench repairing his broken inventions, wearing a makeshift eyepatch made from a strip of cloth; just temporary, he said, until he could make something better. Fulbert had been worried about possible broken bones, but it appeared that the Emperor had gotten away with nothing more than a bit of stiffness. So Fulbert turned his worry to the druggies instead.

Okay, so he was in junkyard mentality now. That didn't mean that the Emperor hadn't gotten beaten nearly to death by a bunch of crazed hoodlums who were _still around._ The two of them had been laying relatively low, but sooner or later they were going to get noticed. And it was not going to be pretty.

Fulbert had brought it up with the Emperor several times in the hopes that he could be persuaded to move somewhere else, but the Emperor just grinned and said "Don't worry about them," and went off outside to wander around the junkyard doing unspecified but no doubt important things.

But the meeting had to happen, and happen it did, sooner than Fulbert had feared. The two of them were headed out of the workshop to see something the Emperor wanted to show him when there was a shout of "Hey! He's still _here!_" and suddenly bodies were moving toward them from farther up the hill.

The Emperor stood his ground, and Fulbert stayed next to him, cursing mentally: _Why don't you learn, you idiot? Why aren't we getting away from them? They're going to kill you! And me!_

The motley bunch drew level with them and stood in a semi-circle around them, arms crossed. There were maybe eight or nine of them, which was eight or nine too many in Fulbert's book. And they didn't look high so much as drunk, which was worse.

"Hello," the Emperor said, making the first move. "Did you want something? An autograph?"

_We're going to dieeee,_ Fulbert sang mentally.

The druggies stared at them. They were unwashed and raggedy, and Fulbert found himself wondering what world _they_ lived in. Then the Valet bit of him snapped _It doesn't matter, stupid._

Eventually the one who seemed to be in charge readjusted his brain enough for a relevant response, and snickered. "Oh, yeah, sure, we want your autograph, fag. Looks like we autographed your _face_ pretty good. Whatcha back for you want more? One eye one too many for ya?" There were a few other adjectives in there too, ones which probably didn't bear repeating.

"Who's the shorty?" another one demanded. "Is he your lover, fag?"

"No," the Emperor said. "Fulbert, take a step backwards," he whispered. Fulbert complied happily.

"Lissen, we _told_ you we don't want you here. If you leave us alone 's fine, but you come in here, oohlala I'm the _king,_ you all gotta obey and I'ma turn your spot into some-" there were a few more adjectives inserted, and elaborated on more than Fulbert felt was strictly necessary - "museum, you..." The alpha guy trailed off, apparently losing track of his sentence. "Anyway, don't you _learn your_ [_adjective] lesson?_"

"It's the Emperor, _actually_," the Emperor said. "It just sounds grander, don't you think?" Fulbert could not figure out what was going on. This conversation had definitely taken a turn for the surreal. The Emperor was being _way_ too cocky for someone surrounded by a gang of drunken lunatics.

"It's _neither,_" another one of the druggies said. This one was a woman, in punked-out attire, tangled hair and combat boots. "You 'aven't got your [adjective] crown anymore, stupid."

This was true. The corrugated circlet had been stomped flat and bent in half, unsalvageable, and the Emperor, with his usual unsinkable good humor, was working on another crown which he claimed would be much 'cooler'.

The Emperor shrugged. "Does it matter what I've got on my head?"

"N..." There was a moment of general nonplussedness, and then the alpha guy shook his head. "[Verb] this [noun]! Do we need to teach you your lesson again? 'S not a problem."

"Not unless you think it's necessary," the Emperor said quietly, surreptitiously backing up another step. Fulbert followed suit.

The alpha grinned, this not going over his head. "Oh, yeah, we _do_ think it's necessary."

"I'm sorry," the Emperor said. "I'm going to give you another chance to leave."

The alpha laughed. "Since when do _you_ give _us_ chances, fag? Since you din't seem to get it the first time, we're going to teach you for _good_ this time." The group started to move in on them, and Fulbert glanced behind him toward the workshop container and the chainlink fence sans any convenient holes to escape through. "Don't move," the Emperor hissed. Them he turned to the druggies and smiled angelically. "Likewise."

The alpha took another step toward them. "What? [Verb] this [noun]! Shut _up_ already!"

Then the Emperor moved his hand, and the entire junkyard burst into flame.

Fulbert fainted.

When he came to, the Emperor was sitting beside him on the ground, staring at him with his chin cupped in his hands, and both the flames and the druggies were gone. He sat up, blinking hard. "Did that all... actually happen?"

"Yes." The Emperor gave him a hand up, and Fulbert took it before thinking. "How did you..."

"There's not a whole lot which is actually flammable in here," the Empero said matter-of-factly. "I put lighter fluid down in stripes, and made a couple safety circles. It's good to carry a lighter around."

Fulbert looked around. The ground looked lightly singed in a few spots, but apart from that there was nothing to tell you that the entire junkyard had been aflame a few moments ago.

"I don't think they'll bother us anymore," the Emperor said.

"What? Oh." Fulbert shook his head. "Probably not."

The Emperor clapped him on the shoulder. "I _told_ you not to worry. You worry too much, Fulbert."

"Sorry."

"You apologize too much, too."

The next day, Fulbert was cleaning up around what was apparently their very own junkyard when the Emperor called him into the workshop to show off his latest invention. Which, once Fulbert got inside, turned out to be the strangest half-mask he had ever seen. It was metal and leather, rather steampunk, and it covered the Emperor's missing eye and scars neatly and actually looked very cool. But he couldn't quite figure out what the things on the side which looked like clockwork cell phone antennas were supposed to be for. He also couldn't figure out how, since it had no straps of any kind, it was supposed to stay on anyone's head.

"Aha." The Emperor grinned. "This is a two-part presentation." He reached behind him and whipped out a slightly larger object. "Exhibit B."

Fulbert took it, turned it around in his hands, and stared at it. "You made a crown out of spray-painted Barbie doll legs."

"Yep." The Emperor grinned, took it back from him, stuck it on his head, and clipped the half-mask onto it. "Ta-da!"

"You are the weirdest person I have ever met," Fulbert said. It had to be said sometime or other.

"Really? Thanks!"

The crown and mask combination actually looked good on him, Fulbert had to admit, even if it made him look even odder than usual. But he _was_ odd, it wasn't like it was going to hurt him any to advertise it. Not any more than it already had.

Now _that_ was a question that he had to ask. It didn't _seem_ like the Emperor was behaving any differently than he had before the attack, but _surely_ you couldn't go through that without _some_ emotional scars. This was as good a time to ask as any. "You really don't..." The Emperor tilted his head at him, and Fulbert lost his nerve. "...miss... binocular vision?"

"Binocular vision? Nah. Why?"

"Um... I don't know. I thought... depth perception might help you with making things."

"Depth perception?" The Emperor laughed. "Fulbert, look." He closed his good eye, clamping his hand over it firmly. "Do something."

"What?"

The Emperor sighed. "Hold up some fingers or something."

"Oh." Fulbert held up three fingers, not sure what this was about.

"Three," the Emperor said.

Fulbert blinked. It was probably psychological or something - people automatically held up three fingers when asked to show a random number, and the Emperor had picked up on this. He changed it to four.

"Four."

He changed it to one. "One," the Emperor said, then "Five. Two. Four. Seven. Ten. Three. None."

"How are you doing that?" Fulbert almost shouted. The Emperor took his hand off his good eye, grinned, and pointed at the half-mask.

Fulbert stared at him. The Emperor _had_ lost that eye, he was sure of it. And okay, it was possible to peek through one's fingers, but _not _through one's palm.

"You know what?" he said. "I'm not going to ever ask how you do anything ever again."

He stared at the wall for a few moments, and began to think he finally understood part of how the Emperor functioned. "If someone chopped your legs off you'd just make new ones with super-powered springs in them or something, wouldn't you?"

"Probably." The Emperor got a faraway look in his eyes. "You could put jets in them, too, so you could float... and you wouldn't get tired..."

"Don't get any ideas," Fulbert told him quickly.

There was another project the Emperor was working on, one which he was keeping super-secret and working on only when he thought Fulbert wasn't around. Fulbert hadn't been able to figure out any more than that, but it seemed like the Emperor thought it was very important. Personally, Fulbert had had more of his share of 'important' and slightly vicious clockwork inventions already, and wasn't all that curious about the latest one. But since, as the days went on, he hardly ever _saw_ the Emperor anymore, he had to assume that the Emperor was excited about it.

When he finally showed Fulbert what he'd been working on, though, it was not at all what Fulbert had been expecting.

"_Another_ hat? Your Majesty, I appreciate the gift, but there are only so many hats I can wear at once..."

"Stack them," the Emperor told him. "If you sew them together they'll stay on." Fulbert had a feeling that was an order rather than a suggestion. He resigned himself to wearing too many hats.

"Besides, this hat comes with a title," the Emperor continued. Fulbert frowned at him. "What kind of a title?"

"You are now the official Organizer of Dolls," the Emperor said proudly. Fulbert continued to stare at him, feeling that there must be something obvious which he was missing. Or maybe not. You could never quite tell, with the Emperor.

"Come see," the Emperor said now, grabbing Fulbert by the hand and leading him outside and to another shipping container farther up the hill, half-resting on the one they used for city-watching but still relatively vertical. Fulbert had never been inside it before. He followed the Emperor inside, and stared, nonplussed, at the thing standing in the back of the container.

It was a life-size doll, or maybe a mannequin, standing in a relaxed and disconcertingly natural pose on some kind of a pedestal. Its face was painted in a little-kids' Halloween costume version of skeleton makeup, and it was dressed in a black marching-band jacket, a kilt, and a gaudily plumed Greek - or Roman? - battle helmet with a shuttlecock attached to the front. And it was holding an electric guitar, of the forked, rock-band-logo kind.

Fulbert stared at it, and at the Emperor, and at it, and at the Emperor, and back at it. He had no words for any of this picture. He was just going to keep staring, he decided, until either the Emperor or the mannequin did something. Hopefully the former.

The Emperor grinned again. He appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. "Observe." He removed the battle helmet from the mannequin's head, revealing a large windup key, which he wound up before replacing the helmet on the thing's head.

The mannequin came to life, jerkily at first, its movements becoming more natural as it blinked and stretched. It looked remorsefully at Fulbert and the Emperor, adjusted its helmet, and wandered off past them, presumably to go practice guitar.

_You promised not to ever ask him again how he does anything,_ was the only thought which came to Fulbert's mind. _You don't think that might have been a bit premature?_

Well, everything had been pretty surreal for the past few weeks anyway. He felt almost amazingly unamazed at this latest turn of events, and in fact was pretty sure he was never going to be all that surprised by anything that happened ever again. He turned to the Emperor and managed to find his voice again. "Dolls plural?"

"This one was just an experiment. Their voices are giving more trouble than anything, so he doesn't talk. But I'll make more, and they'll be even better. I did tell you there would be others, one way or another. Come on back to the workshop, I have the rest of your uniform there."

It turned out to be a mottled gray suit with a lacy cravat and sleeves and a diagram of what was either a subway system or an electrical circuit on one leg. Fulbert held it up and could see right off that it was at least two sizes too small for him, but thought better of mentioning this to the Emperor, whose sewing skills were clearly better than his measurement skills. Maybe if he cut off the sleeves...

Organizer of Dolls, huh. Typical of the Emperor to leave all the organizational work for him. But that was practically like being in charge of all the people in the kingdom...

He grinned. The Emperor had wanted a kingdom, and it looked like he was going to have one. This was going to be _fun._

A/N: Sorry for the long wait for update, I've been away from the computer and things have been a little crazy for the past few weeks. Not to mention my writer's block, which is being worse than usual on this particular fic.

As usual, critique, feedback, and questions much appreciated.

Oh, and something long-overdue: All credit for the name Fulbert goes to TheSweetClover, who was the first person to ever brainstorm this fanfic with me in any form on one of the first too-late nights, and who suggested that the Prime Minister looked like a Fulbert, for which I am forever indebted to her. She is an amazing writer, everyone should go check out her stuff.


	5. Chapeau 4

Chapeau 4

_A kingdom of tin; not just windup toys; renovation and alienation; the fourth hat; another title and a bigger plan_

Over the next few months, the population of the junkyard... grew. At least, depending on what your definition of a population was. If your definition of a population involved counting living people in an area... then it depended on what your definition of 'living person' was.

Because the Emperor was getting better at making automatons. So good, in fact, that you couldn't really call the things he made automatons. Perhaps a better term would be 'living doll'. Because that was what they were. They started off doll-like, but after the initial wind-up, they appeared to recharge themselves with movement, and they slowly got less and less jerky and inorganic in their movements. And slowly, as well, got warmer.

It occurred to Fulbert that this should bother him. But somehow, it didn't. He really was not that person anymore, the one who tried desperately to pretend that everything unfamiliar didn't really exist. After the skeleton in the kilt, who turned out to be quite an accomplished guitarist and not _all_ that much else that Fulbert could see, the Emperor mastered the art of giving his dolls voices very quickly.

And this revealed something else which the dolls developed as time went on: Personality. Lots of it. Until something can speak your language, its sentience may be under doubt and its unique quirks and expressions dismissed as a product of the imagination; but once it can hold a conversation with you, its intelligence becomes much harder to deny. And there was another thing, too.

Most of them had names. They weren't names the Emperor had given them - it didn't seem that he was all that invested in names, as a rule. The dolls just knew, somehow, what they were supposed to be called. And there was no way at _all_ to figure out where _that_ knowledge came from.

There was Albert, a built-up version of one of the discarded antique dolls with frilly sleeves and French hairdos, acting that part to a T and therefore sleazy, a pain in the behind, and occasionally malfunctioning or patinaing; tiny, quirky Zorra in her little pigtails and exaggerated eye makeup; Richard, who could have passed for a regular man on the street if it wasn't for his costume, preternaturally pretty features, and painfully precise approach to everything which made him appear to be acting a perpetual part in a nonexistent play; Jasper and Joren, the twin boys in blue, perpetually teetering on the line between machismo and bullyhood - Fulbert didn't like them much, and it was safe to say that the feeling was mutual. Purple-haired Eli; dredlocked, sickeningly-cute-on-the-outside, as-bluffy-as-anyone-else-on-the-outside Lewi - L-E-W-I-no-O-no-U-no-S-it's-spelled-phonetically-mofos; Ricardo; Zach; Nathalya; Cat... the list went on. And on.

Skinny, hyperflexible Cat, with her leopard-print stockings and combat boots and messily done hair, puzzled Fulbert somewhat. She reminded him of someone, and he couldn't quite remember who. He puzzled over it for quite a few days before it hit him - she looked exactly like, or at least pretty darn similar to, that female druggie, the one who had made the comment about the Emperor not having a crown anymore. He had remembered her because she seemed more lucid than the rest, and more amused than aggressive. He wished that he could ask the Emperor whether it was an intentional resemblance or not.

But he hardly ever saw the Emperor anymore. As the kingdom grew, the man in red had become increasingly solitary, retiring to his new workshop on the hill to add parts to the coming additions to the junkyard's population. The attack episode had changed him, in ways which someone who didn't know him well might not have noticed. He was still crazy, but it was a more sophisticated brand of madness. The young, enthusiastic man who Fulbert had gotten acquainted with still showed through about half of the time, but the new, other half of him was someone older, more mature, charming in a calculated rather than artless way, rather conscious of everything he did, and with an even bigger ego than the old Emperor. Apparently trying to assert his Emperorness even more, he'd made himself an absurdly impractical and somewhat scary cape and decorated his jacket and vest with medallions. He wore white gloves, too, completing the crazy-aristocrat look, and only Fulbert ever wondered how much of the reason he wore them was to hide his scars. The Emperor didn't mingle with the rest of them anymore - he made public appearances. And Fulbert was slowly coming to realize that yes, there was the Emperor and then there was the rest of them, and he, Fulbert, fell squarely into the category of 'the rest of them'. He didn't know this Emperor any better than any of the Emperor's living dolls did. Yes, he knew a bit more of his history, but sometimes he found himself wondering whether any of that had ever really happened at all. It seemed so far away and irreconcilable with who all of them were now.

But there were other concerns at hand, because when the population of the junkyard reached twenty-five or so, the Emperor seemed to decide that it was time to make it into a properly kingdom-looking kingdom. He had but to give a vague hand-fluttering order, along with the qualifier "And give it a stage!", and the junkyard began clanging and banging with the sounds of renovation. Fulbert, as Organizer of Dolls, was theoretically in charge, but since practically he didn't exactly feel up to becoming an architectural designer on the spur of the moment, he mostly stood still in the center of the chaos and shouted at people who looked as if they weren't doing something which they should be doing.

The citizens of the tin kingdom - for that was what it had been christened by someone or other, nobody could really remember who at this point - were _strong. _Fulbert stood and watched in amazement as they worked together to lift the shipping containers from their spots and stack them neatly and orderly according to some undictated plan. Jasper and one of the girls - Lillian? Nathalya? - came up with the idea to build towers out of scaffolding, and then the stage went up, out of scrap metal and more shipping containers and goodness knows what, and all Fulbert could do was stand back and smile and try to look as if he had had something to do with all of this. After all, he _was_ Organizer of Dolls, where was his title if he didn't actually organize the dolls?

When the whole construction project was done - or, at least, the important parts - there was a not-exactly-square stage with a few rather random sticky-outy bits, and three or four scaffolding towers, and thirteen or fourteen neatly stacked shipping containers, and then some not-so-neatly-stacked shipping containers further up the hill, the ones which either contained the Emperor's workshop or were living spaces for the rest of them. Someone spray-painted the Emperor's portrait on one of the crates, and the kingdom was declared renovated. Or, in any case, renovated enough.

When the Emperor first saw the finished product, he had a fit. It took quite a while to figure out that the fit was from happiness and not anger. When someone is jumping up and down and screaming, it can often be quite hard to tell.

"Fulbert," he said eventually, "you've outdone yourself." He produced another hat from somewhere and balanced it on top of the stack. "So I'm giving you another title."

"Oh?" Fulbert said a trifle warily. "What's that?" It was the first time he'd seen the Emperor in four days. Considering how the man been acting lately, it was almost surprising that he still remembered Fulbert existed. And though Fulbert was beginning to quite enjoy his role as surrogate boss over the quite interesting subjects of the tin kingdom, he wasn't quite sure he wanted a whole new set of responsibilities to work with.

"Master of Ceremonies." When Fulbert frowned at him, not quite comprehending, the Emperor put an arm around his shoulders and drew him aside. "Listen. It's all very well that I've got a kingdom to rule over, but who's going to know if they don't see it? We're going to _force_ the public to notice this junkyard!"

"How?" Fulbert asked, as an interjection of formality. It was pretty obvious that the Emperor was going to keep going full steam ahead regardless.

"I want to open this place up to the public. But how? We've got to _draw_ them." The Emperor snapped his fingers. "So I want to put on a show. An acrobatic cabaret. I'll take care of the acts. I just want you to organize the thing. All right?"

Fulbert grinned back at him. "When do you want to open?"

"Oh, say, two weeks? That should be enough, I think. Thanks, Fulbert. I have to go now." And he swept away (something which he could actually do well thanks to the new cape), leaving Fulbert staring after him in a mix of wild inspiration and wild panic.

_Put together a cabaret for the public. In two weeks. Like it's that freaking simple, hah?_

But... _Master of Ceremonies? All right. Not bad. Not bad at all._

And thus Fulbert, sometime known as Valet or Organizer of Dolls, and newly emcee to quite a motley bunch of apparent acrobats, set out to make a cabaret.

...

A/N: So, first of all, my customary apology about taking so long to put up a relatively short and, IMO, not very well-written chapter. I've been struggling with major writer's block, moderate depression, and, well, school and life returning. So yeah. Critique on how to improve/lengthen this chapter would be awesome, because I think I could use it and it's not for lack of will.

Character names: This is the first time in this fic I've had to include such a banal Author's Note, and I feel rather bad about it, but some of the things kinda need to be said:

-Jasper & Joren: Jasper D'Hondt and Joren De Cooman are the actual teeterboard performers in Le Royaume de Tôle. Using actor names to name unnamed characters is something I normally avoid like the plague, but in this instance it was too perfect to resist. So I'm a hypocrite, sue me. No, Fulbert is still not going to adopt the name Hugues at any point; no, the Emperor's real name is (probably) not Emmanuel; Richard is Richard and not Maxime; the jury is out on whether or not Trapeze will be Stéphanie but the Ice Queen is certainly not Jade. And, well, since I *cough* seem to have lost all my info on the singer, she's certainly not going to go by her real name, but she wouldn't have anyway.

-Cat/the female druggie: I had Cat in mind when I wrote the latter character in the last chapter, and then had to figure out why and how that was going to work. It's still pretty damn random, I know. For me, too. Forgive me, my brain just works like that.

And I'm definitely accepting random character name suggestions, as I only have names for about half the cast.


	6. Chapeau 5

Chapeau 5

_To make a cabaret; retrofittings; nostalgia, overwork, and other wonderful things; a pseudo-apartment; the general public; the fifth hat, or, why we put up with you_

Being Master of Ceremonies, Fulbert discovered extremely quickly, did not just mean being Master of Ceremonies. It also meant being director, artistic director, organizer, publicity agent, stage manager, and everything else under the sun. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was the only one in the entire place who knew how to organize anything at all. About half of the kingdom's subjects could take instructions and back him up relatively decently (the other half was generally off having shoving matches or parties or whatever they did when they were supposed to be actually helping Fulbert so as to avoid his having yet another panic attack), but all of them seemed to have inherited the Emperor's complete dysfunction when it came to being able to think things through and get everyone together in an orderly and well-planned manner. How they had managed to get the stage and everything else up Fulbert didn't know, and it never occurred to him that perhaps they actually were capable of getting things done on their own by using methods which were just not his own preferred techniques. But in any case, he was in charge of them now, and getting them all together to rehearse the show several times a day was always extremely panic- and migraine-inducing in an exciting and exhilarating fashion. Always. Every single time. It was a _good_ thing he'd been doing other people's work for them since approximately age six. His nerves were worn down to their ends, but at least they were getting somewhere.

Ohh, yes, they were. The Emperor had, for once, actually kept up his bit of the work with the retrofittings, and he was designing a whole bunch of other dolls who apparently specialized in circus arts. An aging and ducklike fildeferiste showed up, followed by a few pyromaniacs in aviator caps. A girl in red and a woman in white stood unanimated in the corner of the workshop, apparently waiting for the cabaret before they got their turn at living. A singer wearing what appeared to be a combination lampshade and wine-bottle outfit appeared. Jasper and Joren built and dominated a teeterboard as if they'd been using it all their lives. Everyone else developed a sudden aptitude for trampoline walls, diabolo, dancing, general acrobatics, or some combination of the four.

And then there was Tamantha, who'd been a trapeze artist - or, rather, not trapeze but something called duplex which was virtually indistinguishable from a trapeze to everyone else but which she insisted was completely different - all along. She was something... different.

Everyone knew that she and the Emperor had something going together. At least, everyone suspected beyond any reasonable doubt. Fulbert... resented her.

It wasn't, despite a few of the boys' constant teasing, that he was gay - hell, for all practical intents and purposes he was pretty much _a_sexual. It wasn't that the Emperor was gay, either - he had never been campy so much as... Victorian. Foppish. Rock-star-y. Always acting as if he was already a celebrity, even before he had actually become one. And even if either of them - both of them - _had_ been, it probably wouldn't have made any difference. They had never actually really been that close; it just felt like they had been, in hindsight.

No, it wasn't that he resented Tamantha _that_ way. She was just the final nail in the coffin of the more casual, one-on-one bachelor days. Fulbert was pretty sure that the Emperor didn't see him as anything but a servant now. Not that, once he got over the nostalgia and stopped walking around with a head full of angst, being servant to a differently sane emperor in the most amazingly salvaged place he had ever seen was such an awfully bad thing.

There were a couple precariously balanced shipping containers toward the back of the junkyard - or maybe the front, depending on whether you were pointing toward the port or the old city - which were the Emperor's living quarters now. Fulbert had never seen them, though he suspected they were quite nice. The rest of them had to put up with some rather... surrealistic living arrangements.

It had been the guitarist's idea, to begin, to furnish the towers of scaffolding with curtains, overstuffed leather chairs, chandeliers, and other discarded pieces of home life which, quite frankly, looked as though they belonged more in a museum than in a home. At any rate, he had begun the project one day, pottering around with the mildly disapproving look he had on most of the time when he wasn't playing guitar, and everyone else had let him do his thing. It was understood that this was a privilege the guitarist had. After all, he had been here first. The fact that he had been here first _after_ the Emperor and Fulbert was ignored, or maybe actually forgotten, by everyone including the martial skeleton himself. He still didn't have a voice - that was one piece of retrofitting which the Emperor had either forgotten or decided against. The fact that he, the guitarist, was best friends at _least_ with the singer was either extremely ironic or supremely fitting.

But, in any case, after a few weeks of his redecoration, the junkyard now had what could be said to be a house. Or an apartment. Or living quarters. Or _something._ It was a very strange arrangement, the center tower being topped off by a structure which looked like a giant chair wreathed by a spray of skeletal sticks, but it was certainly very tin-kingdom-y, very Victorian (there was even a gramophone stand complete with working gramophone), and very street on the other side of the fence was visible from anything above the first story, chainlink not being able to contain the whole un-building-regulations-regulated structure, and what was perhaps more important, the street could see the towers too. And the neatly stacked, un-spray-painted shipping containers (all graffiti except Emperor-approved disguised political messages had been scraped off) where no cranes had moved them, and the people moving around on and behind them and practicing their acrobatics. People in the street stopped to look up and stare.

They didn't even need to put posters up. But they did anyway - Eli, apparently a budding graphic designer, was commissioned and painted something large and fancy in red which the motley crowd then engulfed, processed, spat out several more copies of, and went off to paste on the fence outside. They came back several hours later, exhausted from being stopped on the street every time they took a step by people who wanted to know what they were doing and when their circus came to town. Fulbert got a glimpse of one of the posters before it was whisked off. There were only six words on the poster, in a nice font with bracketty decorations. _Le Royaume de Tôle: Cabaret Urbain._ The Tin Kingdom: An Urban Cabaret.

Which is exactly what they were. It was impressive.

And then opening night arrived.

_Everyone_ noticed the junkyard.

More than half of everyone came in.

The gates of the junkyard, long rusted shut, had been oiled and hammered and scraped into submission, and they creaked open at 9:00 PM on the dot. Fulbert watched from the top of the center tower as the public streamed in, and gnawed his nonexistent fingernails, and hoped that an hour and a half of sleep in the last three days would be enough to get him through the show without passing out, and idly wondered why two of the shipping containers, across the junkyard from each other, had smoke coming out of them, and decided that it was either the pyromaniacs - excuse him, fire dancers - rehearsing or some kind of electrical short on the rather imposing amps the guitarist had insisted on, and either way wasn't something he could afford to worry about. Even if he _had_ been able to afford to worry about it, he wouldn't have been able to get to either crate. There were too many people in the way.

Too many people, and this was just opening night. How much publicity had they _had? _Too much, apparently.

He took a deep breath, ran over his speech of welcome and rules in his head - _begin shortly, exits, flash photography, social networks... okay - _and squeezed his way past several people down the walkway to the middle of the audience, and took a deep breath, and began the show.

Everybody was surprised by the projections. Nobody knew who had done them, and nobody was willing to admit to having set them up. Fulbert was not surprised. He was blown away.

Because he had checked the whole junkyard beforehand, for possible suspicious objects/technical accidents-waiting-to-happen, and _there were no projectors_. None. He knew what they looked like - big clunky things, and they had to be bigger the farther away from the screen they were, in order to be high-powered enough to produce that level of brightness. No, there were no projectors. There was only an Emperor who was apparently a magician now too.

But whatever happened, the show had to go on. It became more and more improvised the farther they went on, as the Emperor was only there in the capacity of I-never-ever-rehearsed-with-you-but-I've-still-got-license-to-interfere-and-tell-you-all-to-do-things-as-much-as-I-want, but hell, with only two weeks to set up, it had largely been improv all along.

And it all played out. The dancers danced; the tumblers tumbled; the tightrope walker walked; the troupe of pyromaniacs set everything except the audience on fire; the girl in red found a man in silver who was either a magically transformed audience member or a doll nobody had ever seen before, and did a series of unclassifiable acrobatics with him; the teeterboard duo - well, he wasn't going to discuss them; the ice queen knocked out everyone with a display of hula hooping which went beyond extreme; Tamantha did her thing high above the stage. Everything worked out, well, not perfectly, but pretty darn well.

The audience liked it. The audience loved it. This desensitized, media-saturated populace _loved_ it. The curtain call went on for several minutes. They took something like three or four bows. Fulbert had wanted to be an actor when he was little, and he finally, finally understood what the rush of adrenaline when more than two hundred people were clapping for you actually felt like. It was like being high, except better. He couldn't feel his feet touching the ground.

And then there was the Emperor in front of him, choking him in a red-and-white hug, shouting over his shoulder in order to be heard, "You are the most amazing person ever!" And in his voice Fulbert heard just an echo of the young man who could get astronomically excited over a plastic bag of groceries, still in there somewhere.

"Your Majesty? Fulbert mumbled into both of their cravats. "Um, thank you, but... I can't breathe?"

The Emperor loosened his grip a bit, and held him out at arm's length instead. "I formally appoint you Prime Minister, Fulbert. My second-in-command forever."

It was a demonstration of supreme self-control over sleep deprivation and adrenaline that Fulbert didn't break down and start bawling then and there. He managed with only a bit of moist-eyedness, and a "Thank you, Your Majesty. Thank you very much."

"Of course, you'll need another hat," the Emperor said. "I'll make you one."

And around them, the applause went on and on.

The End


End file.
